The ongoing disconnect between the possible and the practical is especially visible in the medical sciences field where, at one end, sophisticated research and development efforts continue to advance the frontiers of disease prevention and lifespan extension while, at the other end, governments and insurers continue to struggle with providing a reasonable standard of care at a manageable cost to an aging population. The medical imaging field offers an example of this disconnect. Sophisticated imaging devices and associated computer algorithms have been developed that can produce gigabytes of high-quality images of a patient's interior anatomy. However, cost-pressured hospitals and time-pressured clinicians are justifiably resistant to adopting a standard of care for disease screening that would add yet another modality to clinical workflow and hold clinicians accountable for large amounts of additional image data per patient. In the practical world of medical imaging, it is possible for a proposed screening modality to fail simply because it provides “too much information” to the clinician.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women other than skin cancer, and is the second leading cause of cancer death in women after lung cancer. For the year 2003, the American Cancer Society estimates about 211,300 new invasive cases of breast cancer and 39,800 deaths from breast cancer among women in the United States. X-ray mammography is currently the only imaging method for mass breast cancer screening. In health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and other medical organizations, specialized x-ray mammography clinics designed for high patient throughput are being increasingly used to screen as many women as possible in a time and cost efficient manner. Numerous studies have shown that early detection saves lives and increases treatment options.
As discussed in Ser. No. 10/160,836, supra, it has been found that the use of ultrasound mammography (sonomammography) in conjunction with conventional x-ray mammography can drastically increase the early breast cancer detection rate. Whereas x-ray mammograms only detect a summation of the x-ray opacity of individual slices over the entire breast, ultrasound can separately detect the sonographic properties of individual slices of breast tissue, and therefore may assist the radiologist in detecting breast lesions where x-ray mammography alone fails.
Although primarily described infra in the context of ultrasound imaging, it is to be appreciated that data from other full-field breast imaging modalities (e.g., MRI, CT, PET) can be advantageously processed and/or archived according to one or more of the preferred embodiments described herein. As used herein, the term “radiologist” generically refers to a medical professional, clinician, or similar person that analyzes medical images and makes clinical determinations therefrom, it being understood that such person might be titled differently, or might have varying qualifications, depending on the country or locality of their particular medical environment, or depending on the particular imaging modality being used.
One of the problems involved in integrating a full-field modality such as ultrasound into existing breast cancer screening environments relates generally to clinical workflow. Generally speaking, it is neither time-efficient nor cost-efficient to perform an adjunctive full-field breast ultrasound (FFBU) scan on every patient. However, it is likewise not efficient to perform FFBU screening on an ad hoc basis, for example, in which patients would get called back to the screening clinic for an FFBU only when the radiologist or other clinician analyzing their x-ray mammogram determines that an FFBU procedure is required. It would be desirable to provide a method and related systems for streamlining the x-ray mammography/FFBU patient visit workflow so as to jointly use the x-ray mammography equipment, the FFBU equipment, and the associated clinical staff time in an efficient manner.
Another problem involved in integrating a full-field breast imaging modality into existing breast cancer screening environments relates generally to archiving the full-field image data, such as full-field breast ultrasound data, in addition to the x-ray mammogram data. A most complete archive would comprise an entire three-dimensional volume of ultrasound data. However, this three-dimensional ultrasound dataset is generally much more voluminous than the traditional x-ray mammogram data, e.g., on the order of gigabytes for the complete ultrasound volume as compared to tens of megabytes for complete x-ray mammogram data. Regardless of whether the information would be stored in a totally digital archive, a hybrid digital/hardcopy archive, or a purely hardcopy archive, storage space would become a problem. Additionally, other problems can arise relating to the storage of the entire ultrasound data volume, such as the possibility for subsequent malpractice claims involving unfair hindsight analyses of the entire ultrasound data volume.
In view of the above discussions, it would be desirable to provide methods and associated systems for obtaining, processing, and/or and archiving full-field breast image data, such as full-field breast ultrasound (FFBU) data, in a manner that promotes ready integration with current x-ray mammogram-based breast cancer screening methodologies.
It would be desirable to provide such methods and associated systems for full-field breast imaging that avoids or reduces clinician data overload problems that can arise from the existence of large amounts of three-dimensional full-field breast image data.
It would be still further desirable to provide such methods and associated systems that reduce required archive space for full-field breast image data while still providing sufficient data for future analysis or comparison purposes.